Thursday, September 20, 2007

How soon before the MP's / talking heads show a rash of their concern about the dead strewn across Helmand and Iraq ? Can we have a "first sighting" ?... there was a time when you could always rely upon the ridiculous Nicholas Fairbairn.

Perhaps the Spread betters could run a book. Favourite would almost certainly be fellow Scot of Auld Nick the Shagger of Ayr, Des "I speak your weight" Brown from nearby Doon Valley, with Ed Balls following right behind.

Whenever you hear a policeman, politician, or prosecutor proclaiming zero tolerance for ``drug activities'', remember this well: Fortune 500 transnational corporations, with DEA licenses, manufacture vast quantities of amphetamines and other DEA Schedule 2, 3, 4, and 5 psychoactives, perfectly legally. The drugs are transported around the country, perfectly legally, by the Postal Service, UPS, Federal Express, and other corporate shipping empires. In hospitals, cocaine and morphine (among other infamous drugs of abuse) are standard and legal anesthetic options. The military equips medics with ketamine (a phencyclidine, as is PCP) for use as an emergency general anesthetic in the field. Licensed physicians routinely prescribe many of these drugs - for example, Ritalin (a controlled amphetamine) and Percodan (containing oxycodone, a codeine analogue narcotic) - to children and to adults. Licensed pharmacists routinely dispense these drugs, perfectly legally, from the corner drugstore, and people with prescriptions bring them home and put them in their medicine cabinets, perfectly legally.

In the United States, under 21 USC 841, anyone who engages in these activities without a license ``shall be sentenced to a term of imprisonment which may not be less than 10 years or more than life'' in large bulk quantities and ``shall be sentenced to a term of imprisonment which may not be less than 5 years and not more than 40 years and if death or serious bodily injury results from the use of such substance shall be not less than 20 years or more than life'' in lesser bulk quantities. These sentences cannot be suspended, converted to probation, or paroled (murder, rape, mutilating assault, and other horrible violent crimes with actual individual victims, can usually be partially or fully suspended, partially or fully converted to probation, or paroled). Multimillion dollar fines can also be imposed, on top of imprisonment.

In Canada, the Narcotic Control Act specifies life imprisonment as the maximum penalty for trafficking and possession for the purpose of trafficking in narcotics (e.g. Percodan) - unless you have a license, in which case it is perfectly legal.

What these laws mean is obvious: have the piece of paper, A-OK, lack the piece of paper, the state will destroy your life. The situation with certain firearms is quite similar, as explored in the Disarmament Agenda. These are the trappings of a vicious, intense police state.